man commented.

He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.

"Call on me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," he said briskly. "I'll
make you a proposition."

He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for
he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr.
Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these
proceedings, staring at the card, which read:

John P. Henderson, Inc.

Van Ness at Potter Groya Motors

A westbound street car bore down on the corner. Thompson gave over
reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things,
boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe
Rooms.

At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given
him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an
enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from Nob Hill down
to the heart of the city. An elevator shot him silently aloft to the
fifth floor. As silently the elevator man indicated the location of
Apartment 509. The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as
if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.
Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that
muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he
pressed a black button in the center of a brass plate. The door opened
almost upon the instant. A maid eyed him interrogatively. He mentioned
his name.

"Oh yes," the maid answered. "This way, please."

She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a
bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather
chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. HENDERSON'S PROPOSITION

Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe. He seated
himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside
a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor massive.
Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the
hands of many lodgers. Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a
place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie
down and sleep. That was all.

Thompson smiled sardonically. With hands clasped behind his head he
surveyed the room deliberately, and the survey failed to please him.

"Hell," he exploded suddenly. "I'd ten times rather be out in the woods
with